Businesses and other organizations often conduct operations requiring significant computing resources. Some such organizations may maintain their own computing facilities, such as data centers, or may conduct computer operations using computing resources of computing facilities managed by others, such as a service provider that manages a provider network comprising one or more data centers.
Often computing facilities are designed and built based on anticipated demand for computing resources. However, actual demand may differ from anticipated demand. This may lead to inefficiencies and/or bottle-necks at computing facilities. For example, server configurations of servers installed in a computing facility may be selected based on anticipated demand for various server configurations. However, actual demand for particular server configurations may differ from the anticipated demand. Also, as another example, support infrastructure for servers of a computing facility may be designed and built based on anticipated demand for such support infrastructure. However, installed server configurations may differ from anticipated server configurations resulting in over supply or under supply of support infrastructure for servers of a computing facility.
To efficiently utilize computing resources, some facility operators may query customers about what applications the customers plan to execute. The facility operators may then use this information to select server configurations to install in a computing facility. However, actual use may vary from planned use, and some customers may prefer to not share such detailed information with facility operators for privacy reasons, strategic reasons, or various other reasons. Alternatively, facility operators may utilize profiling techniques to determine applications or classes of applications being executed on servers. However, such profiling techniques may require access to customer applications and may reduce customer privacy or raise other security issues.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that the embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include”, “including”, and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.